Sunday, 30 December 2012

The library that Kent Weeks has set up on the west bank is attracting some lovely donations. This time it was Elizabeth Buckley who had taken a great deal of trouble finding some English language books suitable for Muslim children. She also brought some lollys!!

Thursday, 27 December 2012

Salah who is charge of the excavations at Karnak has sent me this great update and photos. Many months ago he showed me round the excavations and told me he was convinced there was a third set of baths there so I was very excited for him when he found them. Below he says he thinks there are even more and I bet he is right. there was a good article published in Ancient Egypt magazine July 2012

From Salah Elmasekh

Here is the pic for the our
excavation
At the first we found three Baths in the front of Karnak temples
the first Bath "Ptolemaic baths "dating back to 250 BC and you this
consists of two circle Rooms inside each one 16 seat and the 2nd one in the
mosico floor there is beatuiful decorations with two animals from the sea and
the Nile and after that you every think about this one
- the 2nd Baths is Roman one dating back to 200 AD and this Bath still work for
long time more 200 year's and the article in the magazine
- the 3rd Baths "2nd Ptolemaic baths " lie out in the site between
the two baths ath the North the first one by 25m and at the south of Roman
baths directly and under it this baths dating back to 200 BC and the oldest one
until now this Bath consists of from many Rooms 3 inside the 2nd one there is
two seats bigger size for two person to have shower inside it and beside the
seats there is bath tub and all the floor of these rooms covered by mosico
floor and these floor have very slop shape two the west for a reason to take
all the waste water out side of the baths and in west side we found two pipes
the first one for waste water and the 2nd one for the Hot water and the
extention of this baths extended under the 2nd Baths there is opinion talking
about that baths this private baths but I think there no private in the front
of Karnak it mean's in that time there a palace in Ptolemaic time but not in
that site because if see all the baths we found all of them in the same area
and the same direction it means also that area for the baths to reception for
the visitor's before visit the temple and all the baths in the left hand for
the person enter the temple , I'm so happy for all the work really especially
with this baths and all of them with different design so very good for me and
in my opinion I think there more Baths in the front of Karnak temples not 3
only because if we imagine about the number's of the visitor and jut we work
only in the left side what about the write side .me and my team we would like
to thanks for Mr Ibrahim Soliman the General director of karnak temples for his
support to us really we like him so much any way thanks

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

BBC News - King Ramesses III's throat was slit, analysis reveals: Dr Zink said: "Before now we knew more or less nothing about the destiny of Ramesses III. People had examined his body before and had done radiographs but they didn't notice any trauma. They did not have access to the CT scans that we do.
Mummy believed to be Prince Pentawere The mummy believed to be Prince Pentawere has unusual marks around the neck

"We were very surprised by what we found. We still cannot be sure that the cut killed him, but we think it did.

Thursday, 13 December 2012

Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt 10/12/12
To celebrate the anniversary of Luxor becoming a Governorate a series of lectures was arranged at Luxor library. The first was by Francesco and was on the subject of colours and painting in ancient Egyptian art. This lecture builds on his book published in 2007 and the lecture in 2008 at the Mummification Museum which is documented on this blog.

A lot of his argument hinges on the hieroglyph for the letter T which is a half circle with the straight side on the bottom. I have to admit i found his lecture more understandable since I have studying glyphs because of knowing T is such an important symbol being used to indicate gender of both nouns and verbs so it appears a lot. It is supposed to be the symbol for bread X1 in Gardiner’s list, however it is noting that X2 is the glyph that appears in offering formulas for bread, beer etc.

Firstly Francesco showed a slide with the T glyph cut out and asked us what is the colour of bread. Answers varied and he actually had another slide where he had recorded answers and the most common was orange with yellow and brown a close second. This glyph is always shown as black which (unless you are a bad cook) is not the normal colour of bread. This was the origin of his research.
The Ancient Egyptian world was a simple one cantered on the Nile, surrounded by the inhabitated land and further surrounded by the desert and he showed a slide of a pot illustrating this in its decoration.

The next bit is hard to document without his pictures as it is all about colour, hues and colour charts. The world was divided into
Light white/yellow
Black land Red desert
Blue water and Green vegetation.
These are called
Hudj (green), Kem (black) Desher (red) Hedj (white). He was then trying to see where dark blue fitted in.
In the Chester Beatty papyrus there is a phrase “her hair is true lapis” Xsbd mAa Snw=s this lead him to the idea that there were two opposites light = colour = hedj and darkness = no colour, absence of colour.
In the 6th dynasty tombs at Saqqara the backgrounds are black, indicating empty space and black glyphs are put on this which are a different black.

So you have a different categorisation where there is light, colours and darkness. The darkness is called Kek
Hedj
Hudj, Kem, Desher
Kek
The water glyph is shown black against this dark background as water is black because of the silt of the inundation. He believes that the half circle is not bread at all but the primordial mound (N30 Gardner). Bread in Ancient Egypt was flat or moulded (baked in a bread mould) into shapes and the bread in the offering formula is always this moulded type X2 sign. He believes that it is a preconceived idea that this is bread.

So there is another relationship of opposites between colours imagine a large X linking these four.

Darkness Kek Dry Desher
(DEATH) (LIFE)

Humid Hudj Light Hedj

During the 1st millennium blue and yellow are the most popular colours. Although the men were portrayed as red and the women yellow these colour differences could also be used to differentiate between individuals. He showed a model from the Leiden museum of bread and beer making, the yellow men are the more prominent men, the ones who spent more time indoors. In the Louvre there is a stele of the God re-Horakhty giving life and the ‘rays’ of the sun are multi coloured showing an understanding of rainbows (rainbows were rare in Ancient Egypt). It is obvious that the Ancient Egyptian artist had a much more complex view of colour than was first thought.

Lugi Vassalli was an artist and his diary has recently been found. He was protecting the monuments before Mariette. He was responsible for the removal of the Medium geese from the tomb and the slide showed where they fitted into the scene. Because Lugi was an artist he understood the artistic importance of the vignette. It was a manual of Ancient Egyptian art. Firstly when you put three of anything this is shorthand for plural or many in hieroglyphics. There are two groups and the out/exterior goose shows a different position and is larger given a sort of perspective, repetition is avoided by use of colour and position and movement is indicated by the tail position.

There are not many paintings in Old Kingdom art but he showed us some. I the mastaba of Ti there is a scenes of cattle wading through the water and the legs of the cattle show through the water. The First intermediate Period was a time of impressionistic art the tiller from Niankhpepi shows from the modelling of the legs an impression of the man being caught in a moment of time and the movement shown by the elongated legs. The three lady offering bearers in a line could be three different ladies or the same lady caught 3 times (like the pictures in a cartoon showing movement). There are two odd pictures in the tomb of Ankhtifi a cow showing a full face to the viewer and a man who looks deformed. But taken in relation to the pictures on the pillars next to them you realise the cow is looking towards another cow that is delivery a calf and the man has turned towards a festival. These pictures are catching the movement. In the Turin museum there is a picture showing the blood spurting from the neck of a cow as it is slaughtered, a man shown in a much paler colour who is a supervisor and the clever use of spots of red paint to highlight something such as the tongue of a cow illustrating its tenderness to its calf as it licks it.

He then went on to talk about the influence of Minoan paintings, when Bietek excavated at Tel el Baba he identified that there where people and bull as engaging in bull leaping like the paintings at Knossos. Actually it is not really possible to leap over a charging bull and it is quite possible that the scene was mis interrupted and it was actually an attempt at portraying perspective. He also does not believe just because there were bulls that this implies Minoan. When you look at the art and the portrayal of a man the proportions are completely different. Undoubtedly there was influence to and fro Egypt and Minoa, indeed all around the Mediterranean basin both backwards and forwards including and through Syria/Palestine area. (At this point a rather lively debate broke out with some members of the audience convinced that Egyptian sea craft had reached ocean going capabilities.) There is a story that Tuthmosis IV married a Minoan princess but no actual proof.

Thebes was the golden age of Egyptian painting and he cited some examples
• The female banquet in the tomb of Rekhmire
• The tomb of Sennefer with the grape ceiling
• In the tomb of Nakht the demonstration of personality in the man ploughing who is bald, with a bent back and red from the son
• The pile of food before the owner compared to the pile of food in front of the workers
• In the Meena the vignettes should appear in the order of work but the 2 part appears first as this was the one Meena was responsible for
• The chariot, you would not use your best chariot (he used the equivalent of a Ferrari) to go to the fields
• The flight of birds at Malkata that look as though they are disturbed by the door opening
• The mourning women in the tomb of Ramose, again indicating movement

It was a fantastic lecture and really challenged you to put aside previous notions and actually look at what was in front of you. He is extending his research (e.g. does region influence colour choice) and I advise you to keep your eyes peeled for any of his publications as they are sure to be interesting.
There was a very lively debate at the end. One of the members of the audience had done his dissertation on Hatshepsut and commented on the changes of her skin colour during her various incarnations, daughter, queen, regent, queen regent, king etc.
Mansour did an excellent lecture the next night on the developments at Karnak but because of the revolution stopping work due to funds he had not got many updates on previous lectures at the Mummification Museum.

It is a Ramasside tomb and shows the typical dress of that
period, elaborate pleatedgarments.
There is a hymn to Re Horakhty twined with one to Amun, nice ba bird, judgement
scene and a lot of scenes of him and his wife with the cult of Amenhotep I and
Ahmose Nefertari. Clearing the debris from the tomb has revealed a lot of the
wall paintings, shaflts and some problems. There are two openings at each end
of the tomb, one is a dead end, the other is not full excavated. The burial
shaft is believed to be in the east floor but has not been excavated. But there
is a big problem with the fragile rock. This tomb is built in an area of poor
quality limestone and the tomb has many cracks. It is difficult to ascertain
exactly how problematic these are as they have not been monitored. The team has
put gypsum across some cracks to monitor any movement and thankfully none has
been detected yet. It is possible that it is more stable than it looks as there
is a blackened niche that they have speculated is where Petrie put his candle
and 1906 reports talk of the poor condition of the tomb. However some kind of
re-enforcement is needed before further excavation can be done to be on the
safe side. What kind is still being resolved but she only has 4 days before she
leaves.

Big thanks to Zsuzsanna, Mansour Boraik, Mohammed Abd el-Aziz for arranging the visit and even bigger thanks to Reiss Omar and his men for getting me up and down the slope.:)

Monday, 3 December 2012

A recent guest at Flats in Luxor, who is a retired teacher uses http://www.thrass.co.uk/ reading system with overseas students. Here she is given some of the local kids a taster. It is really great to see Kent Weeks's library getting good use.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Blogging Books suggested making the blog into a book, it has been great fun working with them and the finished article is now available here https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/luxor-news/isbn/978-3-8417-7088-2

Featured post

UK - co-owner of Flats in Luxor Group. British in origin, Egyptian at heart. First visited Egypt in 1979 and finally got to move here in 2003. Been there, done it and got the t-shirt(IT Consultant, PCG Chairman, ex cult member). Finally living my dream: Egyptology (doing an online Egyptology course at Manchester Uni), sunshine, cold beer and Mahmoud. What more could a girl want?